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"Our way of speaking"- for myths, if they are to serve their
purpose, must necessarily import time-distinctions into their
subject and will often present as separate, Powers which exist in
unity but differ in rank and faculty; they will relate the births
of the unbegotten and discriminate where all is one substance;
the truth is conveyed in the only manner possible, it is left to
our good sense to bring all together again.
On this principle we have, here, Soul dwelling with the divine
Intelligence, breaking away from it, and yet again being filled
to satiety with the divine Ideas- the beautiful abounding in all
plenty, so that every splendour become manifest in it with the
images of whatever is lovely- Soul which, taken as one all, is
Aphrodite, while in it may be distinguished the Reason-Principles
summed under the names of Plenty and Possession, produced by the
downflow of the Nectar of the over realm. The splendours
contained in Soul are thought of as the garden of Zeus with
reference to their existing within Life; and Poros sleeps in this
garden in the sense of being sated and heavy with its produce.
Life is eternally manifest, an eternal existent among the
existences, and the banqueting of the gods means no more than
that they have their Being in that vital blessedness. And Love-
"born at the banquet of the gods"- has of necessity been
eternally in existence, for it springs from the intention of the
Soul towards its Best, towards the Good; as long as Soul has
been, Love has been.
Still this Love is of mixed quality. On the one hand there is in
it the lack which keeps it craving: on the other, it is not
entirely destitute; the deficient seeks more of what it has, and
certainly nothing absolutely void of good would ever go seeking
the good.
It is said then to spring from Poverty and Possession in the
sense that Lack and Aspiration and the Memory of the Ideal
Principles, all present together in the Soul, produce that Act
towards The Good which is Love. Its Mother is Poverty, since
striving is for the needy; and this Poverty is Matter, for Matter
is the wholly poor: the very ambition towards the good is a sign
of existing indetermination; there is a lack of shape and of
Reason in that which must aspire towards the Good, and the
greater degree of effort implies the lower depth of materiality.
A thing aspiring towards the Good is an Ideal-principle only when
the striving [with attainment] will leave it still unchanged in
Kind: when it must take in something other than itself, its
aspiration is the presentment of Matter to the incoming power.
Thus Love is at once, in some degree a thing of Matter and at the
same time a Celestial, sprung of the Soul; for Love lacks its
Good but, from its very birth, strives towards It.
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